Synopsis: A long-ignored religion is rapidly gaining recruits and arcane arts find
dangerous new applications. The most powerful races in the universe are
withdrawing to leave the lesser peoples to their fates.

It took me a while to work out why I didn't really like this book.
It's got some lovely characters, clever ideas and a laudable willingness
to think big. If only more authors would follow its example. For once
here's a book that can't be accused of underambition.

Unfortunately it's too short.

The back cover is wonderful. Reading the blurb, one really starts to
get excited about the tale that's about to be told. One envisions a story
of world-shaking conflict, of gods and men colliding in epic battles.
"The most powerful races of the universe are running scared, withdrawing
to their own strongholds, and leaving the lesser peoples to their fate."
Perhaps one might even have heard rumours about this book from elsewhere
-- the internet, maybe, or other fans. Benny's universe will never be the
same again.

And then you read the book's 240 pages and wonder why it wasn't more
satisfying. A story like this needed more -- five or six hundred pages,
at least. The BBC Books have pegged themselves to 280 pages, but at least
the variable font size lets them stretch out for an Alien Bodies or a Scarlet
Empress. In addition we've got Lawrence Miles's two-part Interference to look forward to, later in
the year. The Benny books seem to be aiming even lower than the BBC.
240 pages? Is that all? One starts to wonder if Virgin lost a little
courage along with the Doctor Who licence.

Thinking about this book afterwards, I couldn't help getting the
feeling that all the best scenes must have happened offstage. There are
so many interlinked plotlines that the overall narrative starts to feel
fragmented. When Benny experiences a change of heart, we don't see it as a
single movement but instead as a series of snapshots. This doesn't help
us understand where she's coming from.

Neat ideas are glimpsed, but then not developed. I'd have liked to
have seen more of the notion of atheism as religion, exploring the
worldview of those people who cling to godlessness with the fanaticism of
an inverted Jehovah's Witness. At one point the narrative seemed about to
go there... but then it swung away to something else again. There's a
lot of interesting stuff in there, but the sheer breadth of the authors'
vision means that no single idea gets a long, hard look. There's just too
much going on.

It's not just the ideas that get short shrift, either. The individual
scenes get the butterfly treatment, which often doesn't do them any good.
Even the ending is a slight anticlimax. Still worse, not everything in
the plot is eventually explained.

But perhaps most annoyingly, the authors rely heavily on their
readers' familiarity with the other Benny books. There's one particular
place oft- mentioned in the text that meant nothing whatsoever to me. An
explanation would have been nice, especially bearing in mind the number of
different ways it ties in with this book's events. Also there's a
mysterious visitor - is he meant to be deliberately ambiguous or did I
miss something? (Interestingly, the book comes close to contradicting
itself regarding his identity). Even when something is given plenty of
screen time, as with the People and the Worldsphere, it's still the events
of the previous Benny books that really tie them into the plot. You don't
have to have read them to understand this one, but without that initial
grounding I found the People's scenes a trifle disconnected. For a long
time they didn't really seem to belong with the rest of the book.

What does this book do well? I adored the Grel so much so that I'm
tempted to go buy Oh No It Isn't.
There's a fine collection of characters here, most of whom manage to avoid
being submerged by the book's events. Right through to the inevitably
apocalyptic end, I could sympathise with them and care about their fates.

However, if you're not a Benny fan then I'm not sure how much you're
going to get out of this book. I personally preferred Steve Lyons's
Salvation, which is a clearer, more focused treatment of similar
themes. Hell, why not Mortimore's Beltempest? It may be a confused mess, but at least
you're in the hands of the past master of apocalyptic grandeur.

The comparison with Salvation is in fact quite an enlightening one.
Through carefully restricting the scope of his material, Steve Lyons
succeeds in painting a deeper portrait of his gods and their worshippers.
He doesn't try to cover as much ground as Winstone and Levene, but in my
opinion he does what he does more effectively.

However, a warning. Some people love Where Angels Fear. As
always, all this is only my opinion.

Oh, and one last question -- an ear ring made of dwarf star alloy?
Is that for masochists or what?

I wanted to like the book a lot more than I did. What happens here is
incredible in its scope and vision and the consequences for the entire
line are going to be far-reaching and irreversible. I have no problems
with the story. I have no problems with the plot. This must have looked
great in summary (and it still does, although to read a summary would rob
you of the revelations the book itself brings, and I think we owe it that,
at least). Unfortunately, the authors prove that they're far better suited
to editing than writing. You can almost see the struggle with the prose.

In many ways, I think this is no bad thing. I for one don't expect
brilliant editors to be brillaint writers and it'd be a little
embarrassing for a line of books if the best one was by the editors.
Nevertheless, there's a real feeling of frustration from this book. Not
only could it have been so much better, it positively should have
been. Had I seen a summary beforehand, I would have bet good money that
any author would be hard pressed to write this book badly. I think
I haven't quite lost my bet, but I don't think I've come out very far
ahead.

There are so many good things about Where Angels Fear that it's
difficult to pinpoint where the ball gets dropped. Bernice is quite good,
her scepticism being used to great effect. She feels a lot like a bit
player in this drama, but I don't think that's the source of my problems.
The events here are so big that almost everyone is a bit player
(okay, maybe not God) and a great deal of the book's focus is on her. In
some ways this feels like a little too much, because it becomes pretty
clear that far more important events are going on back at the university,
but I think it works well enough to illustrate what's going on.

Emile is great here, playing detective with surprising aplomb. I'd
never have pictured him for it, but the authors realise the inherent
problems here and give us this section quite convincingly. Indeed, his
sections were probably my favourite from the first two thirds.

Braxiatel is interesting, as always, and the contrast between the more
earthy Renee and the mysterious John are well done. His efforts to
evacuate the academics work quite well. On that note, Renee is a wonderful
character, very human and very likable. Her efforts in the New Moral Army
are fantastic and the way she ends up having far more control than
Braxiatel when things start slipping is very telling, I think. I'm not at
all sure I've figured John out, though, and I suspect I was meant to guess
it. He's obviously not a Time Lord, since he's not of Braxiatel's race
(and he's known to enjoy the more sensual things in life, so that rules
him out), but I can't place him.

I also like the style used, of each scene being fairly short and
snappy. It gives us snapshots of the action, which works much better in
the second half of the book as the pace picks up and things start to
spiral out of control. It also doesn't allow things to get boring in the
first half when not a whole lot is actually going on.

In fact, I'm sounding really positive when I describe any of the
details, but as I said, this book really works in summary form. It's not
easy to pinpoint what it is about the book that goes wrong. If pressed,
I'd hazard a guess that a lot of the dialogue feels forced and unnatural.
There's also the annoying tendency to begin scenes by finishing off an
in-joke that

a) isn't at all funny if you don't get it b) is rather
intrusive, unlike most in-jokes and c) is a pretty darn annoying
thing to do in the first place.

That's a fairly amateurish way to write, but thankfully it disappears in
the second half of the book.

Speaking of which, the second half of the book really is a treat. We
never actually see the events of the prologue unfold, but we don't need
to. The more that events proceed, and the revelations start flying, the
more you realise that there's no easy way out of this at all. And the
ending is just... Wow!

I can't believe I now have to wait two whole months to see what
happens next -- which is a great situation to be in from an editorial
point of view. In terms of shaking the series up (not exactly needed, but
useful anyway), spinning things in a new direction and capturing interest
in the line as a whole, I think this book is an unqualified success.
Which, to an editor (or two) must sound just about perfect. Sadly, the
writing leaves something to be desired and I think that's had a far more
detrimental effect on the book than it should.

Where Angels Fear isn't a bad book, by any means. It's a very
important book and it has grand ideas and an ambitious outlook (as well as
being the shortest epic I've ever read!) The actual writing holds it back
quite a bit, but considering the wealth of material here, it's a testament
to the power of the book that it still ends up being as good as it is. I
can't wait to see where they go from here!

I was a bit trepidatious about this one - a Big Important Book
co-written by a line editor revolving indirectly around ideas originated
by Lawrence Miles? Was I in for another perfunctory arc-greaser a la The Ancestor Cell? Fortunately not. I'll admit I was
worried by the opening chapters, where everything felt like it was being
set in motion with all the subtlety of a flushing toilet, the brevity of
the passages suggesting the authors were more interested in sowing plot
points than involving us with story and characters. But as the narrative
began to unfold, the quick, almost clipped pace started to seem more of an
advantage. I very much doubt this was a deliberate stylistic thing, but it
nevertheless helped give a sense that events were unfolding rapidly out of
control - and I guess that's what the story is ultimately about, the sheer
speed at which a 'civilisation' can go completely mad if nudged in just
the right way.

The nudge in this case, of course, being a quick prod at at the human
religious impulse, and that at its very darkest - that nasty reptilian
urge to believe that you're somehow chosen, you're the only one that
really matters and that everyone else is going to hell. Secular humanist
socialist libertarian that I am, my own thoughts on this are that it's
better to base your moral compass on knowing that other people are exactly
the same as you are than on some pie-in-the-sky system of arbitrary reward
and punishment; My problem with the latter being that, yeah sure, if your
god tells you be nice to people in order to gain his favour then why not,
you'll be nice to people. But if on the other hand he tells you to kill
people to gain his favour, well, you'll do that too. Because deep down you
know you're the only one who really matters and you'll do anything,
anything at all, to deny death. Probably - hopefully -that mentality's a
perversion of what the various theistic myths were going for, but in
practise that all too often turns out to be the case.

Even in Doctor Who, incidentally, the occasional story dealing with a
theme of this sort will lapse into a commonplace - but horribly mistaken -
assumption that 'faith' is a quality superior, indeed somehow more moral,
than compassion; look at the respect the 'Grand High Bastard'-style
character of Timanov is afforded in his final scenes in Planet of Fire - a man who has callously and
arbitrarily sent several innocent people to horrible deaths, and yet we
seem to be expected to let him even slightly off the hook just because he
did, after all, have 'faith' - a suggestion I find appalling.

Where Angels Fear doesn't let any of its nutters off the hook in
this fashion. Cruelty and callousness are traits easily awakened in any of
us, especially when we're surrounded by it and it's easy to go with the
flow. Naturally the 'gods' of the book are all trickery and flimflam, but
what's evoked - what's almost assumed on the part of the writers -
is the ease with which madness and murder can get a stranglehold if we let
our guard down.

It's a sorta tragedy, in other words, and I guess it established a new
paradigm for the remainder of the NA run - just scanning the blurb on Tears of the Oracle and Return to the
Fractured Planet, I assume trips in and out of the Dellahan quarantine
got pretty frequent. Ironically, I'm betting Bernice spent more time on
Dellah after it went barmy, a sealed off planet of loonies being a
more dramatic part of the NA landscape than a mere second-rate university.

Anyhow, I mentioned the slight flimsiness of the opening chapters -
admittedly, this ain't a particularly fine novel, not an Interference, say, or or even a half-and-half
triumph/failure like Beltempest. It's more of a solid
genre pageturner. But what rough edges there are are extant mostly at the
front, and once you get into the flow of it it's a very absorbing and
genuinely tense read.

What makes the book work so surprisingly well despite its shortcomings
is the characterisation. Benny here is as excellent as she's ever been -
dealing with the events around her with her usual glib humour, but here in
a attractively self-deprecating way, and also in a manner that's written
very much as a coping strategy - the humour isn't something that's tossed
in, isn't really that funny in fact. What it does is reveal a lot about
Benny's way of dealing with the monsters she encounters - she literally
has to make light of the situation, for the very reason that the
situation is entirely, perhaps irredeemably, terrible. She resembles the
Doctor in this respect, particularly the Fourth, making herself brave by
acting like she is. And her relationship with the Grel servitor Shemda is
a lovely running thread.

Braxiatel's the character I think I identify with most, particularly in
his sheer outrage as events on Dellah become worse and worse - that sense
of 'How dare this happen here?' is very effectively
conveyed, and would cerainly be my own reaction in those circumstances.

Renee's a rather lovely character too - and it's appropriately NAish,
appropriately Doctor Whoey that this pragmatic, fun-loving
tart-with-a-heart kinda character would be one of the few to ultimately be
ingenious and compassionate enough to effect some kind of change in the
situation, no matter how slight. It wouldn't be overstating things to say
that she's the character who really represents all that's good about the
human spirit here. Benny does too, of course, but her effectiveness is
inevitably slightly dulled by the fact we're used to her - she's already
well established by now as a hero so, unlike Renee, there's no surprise in
her turning out to be one. Familiarity breeds, well, familiarity.

Emile... I'm not that enamoured of him. Wasn't in Beyond the Sun either, the only other book I've seen him
in. I'm not entirely sure why, since if nothing else his sweet humility
ought to make him likeable. Perhaps it's because he's the only character
who's noticeably shoehorned into the story. You have to wonder what
Benny's thinking of, entrusting the investigation of a murder to a flakey
adolescent... (I'm not clear on what happened with Emile and the little
pixie thing either. Is it meant to be ambiguous, a dangling thread to be
followed up later, or did I miss something?)

'John', baffled me somewhat, though I found him very effective. I
wondered for a while if he was some future incarnation of the Doctor (you
know, John Smith), given that he was obviously a Time Lord, and a
manipulative and cheeky one at that. But it didn't seem that likely a
proposition and, given his ultimate fate in the book, I guess it's not the
case! Oh well, my fault for coming so late to the party.

Among the more peripheral characters, James Harker is another triumph,
indeed perhaps the one who really makes the book work, for the simple
reason that not since Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks
have I found a character in a Doctor Who (ish) story so utterly
contemptible. And as with Nyder, it's not just that he is an
obscenely horrible, it's that he's utterly dedicated to an obscenely
horrible cause. Somehow that dedication makes this kind of villain feel
more loathsome than, for example, a Magnus Greel, because with a bastard
like Greel you can at least comprehend his selfish motivations. Perhaps
for the sake of economy, the loathsome Harker seems to be the lone
representative of what's happened to the Dellahan mentality. Luckily he
serves this onerous function perfectly. He's given comparatively few
passages of text, but the spare unfussy prose does its job with razorsharp
clarity, establishing him as a vile, horrible credulous toady twerp, and I
was absolutely dying for the eventual cathartic moment when this vicious,
truculent little wanker would get a taste of his own medicine.

But that's what makes the story most-of-the-way effective as a tragedy.
He never does. There isn't any catharsis. And that's quite neat, because
if this was a few years back and the NAs were still going, I'd be on
tenterhooks right now waiting to see what happens next. After the flaccid
Beige Planet Mars this feels like a real shot in the
arm for the post-Doctor NAs.

Wow! What incredible developments for the Virgin Bernice Summerfield
range. As if from nowhere the range suddenly achieves crystal sharp
focus, the somewhat aimless characters have a clear direction and the
location for these books is treated to an overhaul of unprecedented
upheaval. Surely every follower of this series should be desperate to
discover what happens next...

Not me. This is one of the worst Doctor Who (and its various
spinoffs) books I have read and not because of the arc developments,
which as I have mentioned are necessary and welcome, but because the book
is so badly written. This is written by the two editors of the bulk of
the New Adventures and it is appallingly cobbled together. Maybe this
explains why so many NAs were so bloody awful. Almost every area of the
book can be hacked to pieces, characterisation (sketchy at best), pace
(the book chops and changes plots so often its hard to get wrapped up in
any one storyline) and most of all the prose, utterly amateurish and
undramatic. And for what is THE most important book in the Benny range
yet it is unforgivable mistake.

Where to begin. I tried six times to get into this book, the average
Doctor Who book is tackled in about a day or two, this 241 paged
monstrosity took me over two weeks to endure and I had to get to the end
because Dead Romance and Tears of
the Oracle arrived with this and I was determined to read the three
in order. The cover got me quite excited, more so than the turgid
nonsense within.

For a start there are far too many characters involved. I remember
making a mental list once I was a hundred pages in and came up with this
bulk... Benny, Brax, Clarence, B-Aaron, God, Emile, Elspeth, Renee, the
three Grel, Kalten, Fec, James Harker, Maa'lon... now Doctor Who
books have juggled heavy casts since (Timeless
springs to mind) but they achieved what was neglected here, a healthy
balance of plots constantly kept in flux, Where Angels Fear (great
title by the way) took ages to return to certain characters (Emile was
constantly neglected although I'm not sure that's a bad thing...) by
which time their plots were forgotten and I was flipping back to find out
where I had left them. The book was very choppy as it knocked back and
forth between (apparently) unrelated plots, a similar tactic used to far
superior effect in Jim Mortimore's Sword of Forever,
and it was hard to grab hold of anything to engage me.

Another huge flaw was the story's length, which definitely works
against the plot, trying so hard to be epic but falling waaay short of
that laudable goal. How can you tell a thoughtful tale of reawakening
Gods satisfactorily in 241 pages when you don't get to the juicy stuff
until two thirds through? As Finn Clark points out this
book requires three times its length (the pain!) to suck all the
potential out of such a juicy concept. Instead the book is willing to
waste time on a action oriented plot where careful character in
introspection was required. I hate to make such a poor comparison but
when Deep Space Nine handled a similar plot (where the main characters
had to abandon their home, not the God thing) they still had plenty of
time for intense character work but the race against time to leave Dellah
left a bad taste in my mouth. Subsequent books did a much better job of
dealing with the human side of this mammoth shift in the series and if
Where Angels Fear was just set up for The
Mary-Sue Extrusion and Tears of the Oracle it
shouldn't pretend to be otherwise (and the stabs at religious perceptive
are a good hint that that was the intention).

If you want a book that deal with religion in a fascinating and
genuinely surprising manner go read The Sword of
Forever, you won't find anything of interest here. Where that book
was ready to play about with an accepted faith and abuse it to its own
ends Where Angels Fear sets about creating some religions of its
own, none of them especially believable, particularly the highlight, the
Maa'lon. The scenes in where Benny trudges of to see this religion that
has gripped Dellah are a real bore, even when the head man, Maa'lon
himself, turns on Benny over her unwillingness to slaughter needlessly
(well duuhh!). The book tries to channel this faith through James for the
first half but it never spends enough time to share his thoughts and as
such comes across as shallow and uninvolving. And he's a treacherous,
evil bastard so it's hard to put any trust in his passages.

It's a problem that plagues the entire book. Is it a murder
investigation? Is it Worldsphere politics? An end of the adventures on
Dellah? A bomb plot? Another look at Benny's faith? It saddens me to
admits it's all of these and a semi-romance for Brax too. With so much
going on and so little space, it's like being on a roller coaster without
a direction, being thrown this way and that until the book just sort
of... ends. I could have wept, all that running around for this?

The characterisation is pretty standard all told. Benny is well done
of course but had the controllers of this unique dealt with her
cack-handedly I would have been very worried indeed. I found Brax more
enjoyable to follow though and found his uselessness at the religious
fervour spreading rather interesting. His eventual decision to leave is
clearly a hard choice to make and you have to admire the authors for
letting Brax, the most enigmatic of characters, make the choice to
abandon Dellah. His scenes with Renee are the most emotional of the book,
their gentle flirting is a delight and she remains the only secondary
character I could get worked up about, how she manipulated Brax was
extraordinary.

Emile on the other hand was just boring, boring, boring... another
twee, awkward, unconfident guy who happens to be a homo. It's not exactly
a thrilling role model for us gay guys is it? How he is eager from
romance from any looker who throws him a promising look made me want to
throw up. His introverted, mock-brave personality tempted me to reach
into the book and strangle him. I rarely have reactions this strong to
characters in books but this is incredibly poor work, Benny's decision to
leave a murder investigation in Emile's hand is one of a hundred ill
thought out decisions on the writers' part.

I also found the authors expecting the reader to be up on New
Adventures lore to be a bit arrogant. No wonder readers were abandoning
the series in droves... there is little (what there is has little
substance) explanation for God, the Worldsphere, etc. The People are
written as important and known to our characters but the events of The Also People, Down, Walking to Babylon aren't even mentioned. Are we
supposed to guess? As such I found Clarence and B-Aaron pretty useless,
the book suggesting previous tales with them but sod if I know what they
are.

It's rare that I have such a violent reaction to a piece of Doctor
Who related fiction but this book pissed me off on pretty much every
level. Taking into consideration it is a vital cornerstone in the Benny
series only strengths my resolve. If I didn't already know that the
marvellous Dead Romance and Tears
of the Oracle were due soon I would have given up reading this series
right here.